Sorry… I have had seasons of major back and joint problems too with my ankylosing spondelytis… Not easy…
As far as the harsh prairie climate:
Jujube is new to me but it is my #1 hopeful tree once my trees are established… I am putting effort into them!!
My 2nd tree I am not sure but I may would go with either hardy early pears like the harrow types or hardy early american persimmons like yates or perhaps early hardy hybrids like NB-02. Of course I’m planting them all lol… Persimmons probably bloom a bit later than pears and are very hardy trees once established.
Stone fruits are bad on late spring frosts…, some cultivars are better later blooming, but I dont know, they are much lower on my list, my peaches get froze often even my reliance…
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I referenced this thread when I was deciding what to plant in downtown Denver, and can report great success with a Balaton cherry on Mahaleb root stock. Purchased it bareroot from Cummins Nursery in 2019.
It’s in the hell strip in the Capital Hill and has done quite well!
It’s on a west-facing property that catches the reflection of the afternoon sun off the street, so it absolutely warms WAY up before the last frost. I wrap the trunk it in white tree wrap in the spring to try and slow it down and save it from sun scalding before it leafs out. Blossoms reliably get at least one snow on them (ahh Denver), but the cherries power through. Got a bumper crop this year. It gets a little manual watering, depending on rainfall. Maybe 2-3 gallons so far this year.
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Ryan - what’s Balaton taste like?
Here in southern TN… we have some serious late frost issues… often warms up early march and then we get a 25f later in March.
Jplums bloom here starting March 1… they almost always bloom, set fruit… get frosted… drop fruit. Eu Plums bloom about 3 weeks later… so they are a little better bet than Jplums.
But now Persimmons dont even start leafing out good until mid April… and they bloom a bit later. It should be very rare if ever… for persimmon fruit loss due to late frost here.
Might work for you too.
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Thanks Trev - I just ate my first superior plums off my 3rd leaf. Delicious. Also have a toka, mt royal, and empress, but they haven’t given anything yet. If J plums don’t work for you, then the hybrids like superior and toka may? At least they are reported work pretty well here, and we get late frosts. Had superior blossoms April first through third weeks.
Was just out at smokey mountain NP a few weeks back… first time to TN.
@rossn … the last two springs my jplums bloomed set fruit… then got frosted late March and dropped all fruit.
I have added grafts of superior, alderman, bueaty, and even vic red american plum (a few others too).
Hopefully one of these years I will find something that will make it thru our late frosts.
My Eu Plum … Mt Royal bloomed nicely this past spring… it set some fruit… but dropped them all… some made it to almost 1 inch long before dropping.
Perhaps next year… that is like a broken record for me with plums.
I think you picked a reliable one with Mt Royal. Prolific, even in areas of Canada. I suspect you’ll have some good harvests. Same reasons I planted it. I am surprised, however, you get late frosts. We can often get hard freezes through mid-to-late April, so I can empathize. I think 3 years ago we got to 15F the 3rd week, but that wasn’t quite normal.
BTW, Toka is supposed to be a great pollinator partner for Superior, if you weren’t already aware.
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The good news is that what you want do exist. Here in Alaska we have a middle-of-the-winter meltdown; In January temperatures can climb to mid 50’s for a week where everything starts melting, and the very next day of that fiasco temperatures can dip to 0f or bellow. Anything that tries to wake up dies. Heck anything that sheds cold resistance dies or gets severely damaged.
On the other hand there are reliable trees that will not try to wake up, will not shed cold hardiness, and honestly could not care less about late frost. There has been times I have seen my haskaps in full bloom blanketed in snow and me not worrying about it. Cherries and grapes (at least the ones I grow) wake up very late in the season, well past the chances for a late frost. And if there is a late frost, the trees I have are very resistant to it.
What fruit type are you trying to grow?
@rossn Sorry for the VERY late reply, haha. I don’t have a lot of experience with cherry varieties, so take this with a grain of salt. I think “semi-sweet” is a fair description. I let them ripen as much as I can (to a dark red color) and eat them fresh (no preserves, canning, etc). Probably 10% are starting to get blemishes at the ripeness where I pick them. For me they are absolutely delicious. They’ll pucker you up a bit, but there is sweetness there too. Similar experience to say a tart Granny Smith apple. Not as tart as say the skin of wild plums, or something, which borderline knocks my socks off.
I clean up all the fruit that I don’t eat (sorry birds – you get other stuff) to avoid creating a fruit fly ecosystem at the tree since I don’t use any pesticides.
It helps being in the middle of the city heat island, but I’ve actually never lost a harvest. Somehow enough of the blossoms make it through a few late April / early May snows. It probably helps that the temps are rarely much below freezing at these times.
I got no j-plums or eu-plums again this year.
We had a late very cold spell this year (before anything bloomed) that seemed to delay the bloom on my plums.
They started blooming at least a week later this spring… compared to previous springs.
This gave me some hope…
AU Rosa was again my first to bloom followed shortly by Shiro… they were both in full bloom by March 13.
Around Mar 18 we got a 26 degree frost and all blossoms on AU Rosa and Shiro turned brown.
AU Producer had just opened a few blossoms at that point and they got toasted too.
After that frost… AU Producer continued to open new blossoms (the earlier ones were toasted).
Also… Alderman bloomed after that…
I have pictures of AU Producer with several blooms open and looking good on March 25.
Alderman bloomed latest of all… and also had several blossoms open and looking good on March 25.
I had hope that those two would produce some fruit this year… but they did not.
Some fruit developed and later dropped.
My Shiro… which all blossoms got toasted and turned brown March 18… it actually produced some small fruit… that grew some, sized up… but later dropped.
Next spring… I am going to work on replacing all my AU Rosa branches with Alderman/AU Producer.
Taking out the earliest bloomer… and replacing it with the latest bloomers.
On April 9th this year my 5 mulberries had opened initial buds and exposed first flush of fruit.
We got a light frost… which registered 35 degrees on my two back porch thermometers. Yet… on 4 of the mulberries out in my orchard the first flush of berries and leaves all got toasted.
They sent out new growth 3-4 weeks later… but leaves only… very little fruit.
Odd that this light frost only bothered my mulberries… i guess they are more tender than the rest. It did not bother pears, apples, plums, goumi, … anything else.
TNHunter